Bush officials: After Iraq invasion, Europeans hid Iran intel because they feared a U.S. attack.

Today in an email to Fox News, David Wurmser, former top aide to Vice President Cheney, cautioned the Obama administration on its hopes that Russia is willing to get tougher on Iran regarding its nuclear program. Wurmser said that between 2003 and 2006, Russia “threatened tough action, but even somewhat delivered.” But in a twist of logic, Wurmser basically says that it was the U.S. invasion of Iraq that led to less cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program from Russia and other European countries:

But the American-led invasion of Iraq complicated the Bush administration’s efforts to persuade other countries to take aggressive action to contain Iran’s nuclear threat. […]

“Every time in this period I landed in a European capital at [U.N. Ambassador] John Bolton’s request to discuss Iran, the first thing I got was: ‘What is your end game here; are you going to use the information to pull another Iraq? Tell us where you are going with this before we tell you how much we will admit Iran is going down the path to a bomb in the U.N.’ When I failed to give them a guarantee that we will not strike Iran, they stalled on moving ahead with acknowledging or using the evidence in public which in private they accepted.”

Bolton also indicated that the Iraq war stifled progress with Iran. “Before the Iraq war, I thought we were breaking through to [the Russians],” Bolton said today. “Since 2003, they have been very resistant to the idea that Iran was a proliferation threat.”